Turning off email notifications for Office 365 Groups

[rpdodds]

We need to start using "unified groups" in Office 365/Azure AD for an intranet project that uses Azure AD as the identitiy provider. We want communication to stay in the platform, and what we don't want is our 200 odd users receiving personal inbox emails every time an event is created in the O365 Group calendars that they are part of. Or digest style emails of new documents added to the sharepoint doc library.

Basically ZERO notifications in their personal mailbox. Our intranet platform will do enough notifying as it is.

So as far as I can see, in the O365 Admin Center, there is the "Send copy of group conversations and events to group members" setting - which is off by default.

But when a member is added to the group, the group appears in their Outlook automatically and for the group settings there is this "Follow in Inbox" section which is set to "Only replies to you and events" by default.

See the screenshots below. What is the relationship between these two?

   

Is there a way, using PowerShell or other means, to change the per user setting in Outlook to "No email or events" for all members of existing groups?

Or set it as the default setting for all new members of the specific groups?

Or better still, a way to turn it off at the whole tenancy in one swift action?

Seriously Microsoft, how hard would it be to have a few extra options in the settings of the Group creation wizard such as "disable welcome emails" or "make all email notifications opt-in" so administrators have a little more control over who is being spammed with superfluous emails. </rant>

But seriously, is there a way to set "No email or events" in bulk for users or for new group members?

[#2]

@rpdodds Hello, there are several options to choose from when using the Set-UnifiedGroup cmdlet.

For example.

-UnifiedGroupWelcomeMessageEnabled

-HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled

-HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled

-AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents

-AutoSubscribeNewMembers

See this for details about the switches

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/set-unifiedgroup?view=exchange-ps 

[#3]

@ChristianBergstrom Thanks!  

So if I use:

Set-UnifiedGroup "New O365 Group for Intranet" -AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents:$false -AutoSubscribeNewMembers:$false  -HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled:$true  -HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled -ModerationEnabled:$true -ModeratedBy:poweruser1@domain.com,poweruser2@domain.com,poweruser3@domain.com -SubscriptionEnabled:$false -UnifiedGroupWelcomeMessageEnabled:$false

I'm effectively turning off ALL notification emails to members personal inboxes, hiding it from Outlook/OWA, hiding it from address book/people searches, and setting it so emails to the group or calendar events created in the group have to be approved by powerusers 1, 2 or 3.  Is that right?

If I'm going to create 30 odd new groups, should I create the groups first, then run this command and add members last?

[#4]

Also @ChristianBergstrom, I've just noticed that the -AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents:$false switch only sets it to "Replies Only" which I assume is the equivalent to "Only replies to you" in my second screenshot.  That is disappointing that it's not "No email or events".   

Do you know if there's a way to set that?

[#5]

@rpdodds Hello again, just a heads up that the -AutoSubscribeNewMembers switch overrides the -AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents.

As you're working on a 'lockdown' perhaps you should use the -SubscriptionEnabled switch instead.

"The SubscriptionEnabled switch specifies whether subscriptions to conversations and calendar events are enabled for the Microsoft 365 Group."

As for the expected results I'm afraid you have to do your own testing. But now you have the tools you need so enjoy and good luck!

[#6]

Hi @ChristianBergstrom 

I used PowerShell to create 24 new groups and have used the various switches to essentially silence them.  What I've noticed though is that the Unified Groups created via PowerShell do NOT get a SharePoint site created and associated with them.

So how can I create a bunch of new Sharepoint Sites and link those to the EXISTING groups (as opposed to creating a new Sharepoint Site and linking it to a new O365 group as many web guides say to do)?

Do the sites I create HAVE to be a modern site to be able to link to an O365 Group or can I use something like a Document Center site and link it to the corresponding existing O365 Group I created with PowerShell?

[#7]

@rpdodds Hey, there's always an associated SharePoint site created when creating a M365 group. See this for details about auto-provisioned services.

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/OfficeDocs-Enterprise/raw/live/Enterprise/downloads/msft-m365-group...

[#8]

Thanks for that Doc link - it's very informative. But... I think you'll find that if you use the New-UnifiedGroup command it doesn't actually create an associated Sharepoint Teamsite.
As evident by the 24 new groups I had and 0 new sites.
I ended up having to delete the groups and recreate them using Microsoft 365 Admin Center, then running my Set-UnifiedGroup PowerShell script to 'silence' all the groups. The SP sites now exist and are linked to the groups as expected.

For what it's worth, here's a quick Google search on the topic https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=new-unifiedgroup+does+not+create+sharepoint+site&source...

[#9]

@rpdodds *Updated* I noticed this https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/office-docs-powershell/issues/3765 and I suppose it's what you experienced as well. But this should be able to work and I believe that either the associated services had not been fully provisioned, that is synchronized completely, or it could be a thing where one needs to actually access a service within the newly created group for it to populate. So it's all there, but could be "hidden". We have the process automated using Microsoft Graph.